my island

self-absorbed and silly: mainstream liberal media by way of laurie penny

Up until now, I’ve been hesitant to write about this because 1) if I think someone is desperate for attention, I don’t want to give them any more of it and 2) I’d rather be writing about things I like. What’s finally made me do it is not just my intense dislike of Laurie Penny and her warm and fuzzy faux radical romanticism; it’s also the habit she’s getting into of getting snippy with people who have the nerve to call her out on her poor standard of work and her bratty, self-absorbed attitude.

Like her tweet from this past weekend (now deleted) which went thusly:

I misjudged yesterday’s demo. It’s not the movement that’s fizzling out – it’s me, my energy, after working without a day off for 4 months. As soon as I realised that, I turned round, walked away from the protest with just my coat and phone and got on the first train to the coast.

Melodramatic much? I’m sure all of us have little cinematic fantasies that we set to poignant music in our heads. But not all of us are foolish enough to post them on the internet, particularly in the context of a huge political movement. The only thing more pathetic than the initial self-involved tweet (now deleted) is her response to people calling her out on it. Watching Penny respond to her critics is like getting a lesson in How Not to Argue on the Internet 101. One of the chiefest signs that you don’t have a leg to stand on is when you try to be an interwebs badass and sort of vaguely threaten people. Laurie Penny apparently does not know that, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is her stunning lack of self-awareness.

To start with, I have a serious problem with a privately-educated Oxbridge graduate behaving as if she really knows what it’s like to be poor. It’s just like Withnail and I! Only no one drank lighter fluid! Gosh, how profound. I’m sure glad that journalist chose to ask Laurie Penny about what it’s like to be poor instead of one of the thousands of other people who have been on benefits for years. You know, an actual poor person. It’s a funny bit of synchronicity that the titular Withnail of the film comes from money and is merely slumming it until his career takes off. His recurring outraged expression– “HOW DARE YOU!”– reminds me a bit of Penny’s sarcastic and bratty responses to people who dare to criticise her. The wounded indignation of the upper class is palpable. And irritating.

I was poor as a child, and I’m still poor now. I’m fortunate enough to not have to go hungry, to not have children to care for, and to have a steady job (especially since, as a foreigner, I’m not entitled to benefits). It could be worse for me, and I recognise that. So the nerve of someone with Penny’s level of privilege using the crushing despair of real, long-term poverty as a platform for her own banal self-discovery infuriates me. It’s not something that can be blamed on privilege, either; I know plenty of privately-educated Oxbridge graduates who aren’t this utterly self-involved. But those people are intelligent and insightful activists, not opportunistic hacks looking to ride a movement to fame and fortune.

Getting back to the point, I’ve finally realised exactly what it is about Laurie Penny that irks me, and it is this: no matter what she is writing about, no matter what issue is at hand, the real subject of any Laurie Penny column is always Laurie Penny. Laurie Penny, the shivering JSA claimant. Laurie Penny, the burlesque dancer. Laurie Penny, the voice of the revolution. It’s astonishing that someone so self-absorbed has so little self-awareness, but there it is. And she has no qualms about altering other people’s words or even reality to suit her romantic vision of herself.

Let’s look at her article about burlesque and how actually, you know, it’s like, not all that empowering! Read that article— if you must– and then scroll down to the bottom to look at the multiple edits that have had to be done because Penny has embellished details. Which is to say, she lied. She could have spoken to women in the sex work industry, could have given some of them a voice, but it was more important to her to wax philosophical about her own banal teenage rebellion. Moreover, she thinks it’s okay to mislead people about it to make it seem more authentic.

Those of us on the left and ultraleft have already had a field day with this article, in which she apparently expects us to believe that an SWP paper seller made her sing The Internationale so she could have a paper to keep warm. Now, if someone was there to witness it, I’ll be happy to retract (which is more than Laurie Penny would do). But I doubt that’s the case, because it’s so patently fictional as to beggar belief.

Another Penny Laurie gem comes immediately afterwards, when Penny claims, with all the patronising, down-with-the-kids glibness she can muster, that young people don’t read newspapers because they’re outdated. Apart from the obvious fact that a socialist party newspaper is not remotely comparable to a mainstream broadsheet, this is just hyperbolic nonsense. Penny’s ensuing feud with the Socialist Worker Party and Alex ‘Not My Role in the Party’ Callinicos was just the icing on the cake– especially when she asked people on Twitter to join in.

Maybe you can’t expect much from someone who has led a life of immense privilege. You certainly can’t expect establishments like The Guardian and The New Statesman to give a voice to the truly oppressed, instead of their middle-class proxies. Laurie Penny may be a self-absorbed media luvvie, but she’s only a symptom of a industry that thinks it’s important to talk about poverty and oppression– as long as it’s middle-class people doing all the talking. Her obvious lack of talent and insight doesn’t just reflect poorly on her, either. It reflects on all the leftists, liberals, and media wannabes who, instead of seeking a movement that actually incorporates the dispossessed (the disabled, benefits claimants, foreigners, children), laud people like Penny and call her ‘the voice of a generation.’ While Penny and her fellow media gurus are patting themselves on the back at conferences, real people are losing their jobs, losing their benefits, and struggling to make ends meet.

I’ll be interested to see how radical Penny is in a year or two. Her opportunistic politics are as changeable as they are confused. She’s bounced quite quickly from Lib Dems (David Cameron’s soft, evil face!) to Labour (DIANE ABBOTT FOR KING!) to being a supposed radical. She’s jumped ship more often than Nick Clegg. Unfortunately, her writing hasn’t improved in that time. And why should it? Being semi-competent is clearly good enough for The New Statesman and The Guardian (see also: Max Gogarty). She’s got a book on the way, provided she managed to get someone to work on it for her for less than minimum wage. The hypocrisy is staggering.

Laurie Penny is by no means exceptional, as far as liberal mouthpieces go. What makes her particularly annoying to me is the way she’s using the student movement I was up until recently involved in to propel her career, coupled with her complete and utter lack of insight. She’s embarrassing. Her agenda is clear, and it’s only ‘left-wing’ in that it does and will continue to repeat the trajectory of people like Kat Fletcher. Posture as a radical, get attention, get power and a comfortable position, and then to hell with all those principles. Laurie Penny is treading a well-worn path for privileged self-deluded liberals. She seems much more concerned with cheap attempts to be romantic than with actually reporting facts or writing well, and I wish she’d save her clumsy turns of phrase for whatever novel she’s working on. Actually, more than anything, I wish she’d just shut up.

6 Responses

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sabcat Printing, Tabitha. Tabitha said: All right, here it is. A handy one-stop rant about why no one should take Laurie Penny at all seriously. http://wp.me/p10nAR-1w […]

I work on the Comment desk. I didn’t commission Laurie’s pieces above, so won’t comment on that… but!

While I fully admit that there’s no way I can say this without sounding like a defensive and annoying arse – I’d like to say that we really (and I mean, really) try hard to give a “voice” to what you refer to as “the truly oppressed”. That’s what, in fact, most of our series called The Cuts get personal (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/series/the-cuts-get-personal) are about.

• and John Harris’ Anywhere but Westminster series. He travels throughout the country to interview people most affected by the current reforms.

I’m the first to admit that our work here isn’t complete (yeah, if only!), and that we can always do better. But if you’d like to recommend people, or send us ideas, or you think we really need to cover stuff we haven’t done, drop me a line if you fancy.

i think you’re spot on about the self-absorption – it’s more about penny moving through these situations than the situations themselves – but i couldn’t work out what bugged me about it all until i read your piece, so thanks for bringing it all into the clear.

it certainly doesn’t make me dislike her or anything though – we’re all a bit shit at times. i was a hypocrite just the other day – and, i was calling someone a hypocrite at the time! such bullshite! it totally ruined my argument (though i didn’t realise it at the time). did i just make that about me? ha! just saying that hating is no good either …

by the way, i followed the link to the SWP paper article, but couldn’t work out what you meant about the singing for a warm paper. did i miss something? i think it’s funny how people get all antsy about lefties in factions with newspapers. though not a subscriber myself, i always thought someone with a lefty paper was a sure bet for a good convo, and i don’t think i’ve often been let down on that.

I’m glad to find someone at least as or perhaps even more irked by this brat! I googled ‘Laurie Penny is annoying’ just so that I could be reassured that I was not the only person annoyed out of my mind by her infantile petulance